Copyright New York Post
Keep the W in the National Women’s Soccer League. That was a simple ask from Angel City FC veteran Elizabeth Eddy in an op-ed for The Post last week. The pro athlete argued, with both common sense and compassion, that her league needs to develop a standard — as many other athletic governing bodies have — to ensure the NWSL only fields biological women. The issue of keeping female sports female has become an 80/20 issue in our country, so I don’t think people understood just how ballsy it was for Eddy to enter the fray. So much of women’s sports is still illiberal and practicing suicidal empathy. People are stuck in the Stone Age of woke, and at times, legitimately seem more interested in social activism than athletic achievement. And so Eddy’s teammates quickly denounced her op-ed. But did they debate her proposal by using reason and substance? Nah, they just accused Eddy of being transphobic and racist. Angel City captains Sarah Gordon and Angelina Anderson both addressed the piece in a press conference — and the team’s X account shared the video from that, posting: “Our captains spoke with courage and clarity. No one in our community should be questioned, harassed or targeted because of their identity.” What identity has to do with keeping fairness in women’s sports is beyond me. Are you a biological woman, or are you a biological man? None of that mattered to Gordon, who said the team is “hurt.” “And they are harmed by the article. And also they are disgusted by some of the things that were said in the article … We don’t agree with the things written for a plethora of reasons,” she said, adding that the “undertones come across as transphobic and racist.” As a person of mixed race, Gordon added, it particularly hurt her. C’mon. Eddy essentially lobbied for gender testing, pointing out that there are two options used by other governing bodies. Both Eddy and The Post were accused of racism because the story included a photo of Barbra Banda, who now plays for the NWSL’s Orlando Pride. In 2022, the Confederation of African Football pulled Banda off the Zambian squad in the Nations Cup for, ESPN reported, failing a gender-verification test based on elevated testosterone levels. The move led to more questions than answers. Though Eddy’s op-ed never explicitly invoked the Zambian’s name, she proposes that gender testing could shut down such questions and offer a definitive ruling in murky situations like Banda’s. “Players have been excluded and then unexcluded, administrators have blamed and criticized each other, and fans have used the uncertainty to harass players,” she wrote. She also presented a potential path for athletes who are trans or intersex to compete at the professional level. Anyone who took the time to read the piece could see that Eddy is not very good at being a bigot. “Fairness and inclusion are core American values,” she wrote. “Reasonable people can disagree about where to draw lines, but avoiding the conversation altogether by shutting out diverse views does not serve us. In fact, we owe it to current and future female athletes to solve this.” But Eddy’s teammates have shown that feelings — not facts — rule in their world. And that there is no room for debate or conversations regarding third-rail topics that are, at their core, existential to women’s sports. Female athletics exists at the elite competitive level because of sex-based categories. Failure to adopt standards comes at the detriment of women and girls. Ironically, Anderson ended her condemnation of Eddy’s piece by invoking the club’s radical devotion to tolerance. “When I think of LA and I think of Angel City, I think of a place that was founded upon inclusivity and love for all people … ,” she said. “Angel City is a place for everyone.” Everyone except anyone who does not affirm the team’s lefty progressive worldview. By their definition, inclusivity does not include any divergent viewpoints, no matter how mainstream. And worst of all, they are willing to toss their teammate under the bus in a very public way. That’s not an embrace of diversity — it’s the expulsion of a perceived heretic.
